Gov. Gavin Newsom could change how the state handles its severe mentally ill—if he can persuade legislators to fund a proposal in the upcoming fiscal year budget. A Thursday morning event at Crossroads Village, a Momentum for Health mental health campus, brought together Silicon Valley advocates and politicians alike to learn about the new CARE...
Homeless advocates pitch tents at Milpitas City Hall
Pitched tents surrounded Milpitas City Hall Monday night, where advocates for the unhoused staged a campout to address the city’s ongoing homeless crisis. At tonight’s City Council meeting, recommendations will be heard from the Milpitas homeless task force over an issue riling up the community on both sides. While some elected officials such as Councilmembers...
Silicon Valley homeless tally guaranteed to be an undercount
As hundreds of volunteers went out before dawn to tally the number of people living on Silicon Valley streets this week, advocates say many are being left out of the count. The point-in-time homeless census count is part of a requirement for Santa Clara County to receive federal funding. The two-day event in Silicon Valley involves volunteers, lawmakers and advocates searching...
Volunteers scour Silicon Valley to tally homeless people
Geneva Strickland used to bounce from one street to another in North San Jose for more than six years before she found housing. On early Wednesday morning, Strickland came back to her old stomping ground with new purpose—to count the number of people who are still homeless. “I want to give back,” Strickland told San José...
San Jose homeless wary of housing at police parking lot
After decades of criminalizing the homeless—often profiling and citing individuals—San Jose now wants to house them. The San Jose City Council announced last October that a parking lot at the San Jose Police Department headquarters along Guadalupe Parkway would serve as a site for temporary homeless housing. City officials broke ground on Feb. 9 and...
Misleading notice scares San Jose homeless residents, may skew headcount
Homeless advocates worry that a misleading cleanup notice has prompted homeless residents along Guadalupe River to leave their camps—days ahead of an important census count. On early Friday morning, San Jose officials and contractors pulled up in trucks at the sprawling encampment along the Guadalupe River Creek near Columbus Park to haul away trash, tents...
Santa Clara County expands homeless prevention services, lacks housing
Two years after adopting a multi-prong plan to address the growing homelessness crisis in Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County and San Jose are making some headway. But advocates and officials say the work is far from finished. Since January 2020, Santa Clara County has cut the number of people falling into homelessness annually by more...
‘They’re everywhere’: Rats plague San Jose’s largest homeless camp
At the epicenter of a humanitarian crisis in San Jose where hundreds of people sleep outdoors, another crisis is festering: rats. “They’re everywhere,” Luke Eblieg, an unhoused person living at the sprawling encampment near Columbus Park, told San José Spotlight. “And they are nothing like I have ever seen.” Brown rats are chewing through electrical wires...
Food truck brings hot meals, essentials to San Jose homeless
In an effort to serve more unhoused people, one nonprofit sends a food truck out to encampments to meet people where they are. Dubbed “Hope on Wheels,” the food truck visits at least three encampments every week to bring hot meals and essential supplies such as jackets, tarps and hand sanitizer to unhoused people across the South...
San Jose homeless residents say nonprofit broke promises
Some unhoused people who received temporary housing after being swept off land owned by Apple are now worried they’ll end up on the streets again. Participants of the program, who have lived in Casa Linda Motel at 1669 Monterey Rd. in San Jose since September, said the program paid for by Apple and managed by HomeFirst was supposed to help...